Someone someday will celebrate the last Christmas.

The last Christmas celebrated may happen some time after the last Christmas we’d recognize, even in a mutant form, and how and when it will happen is a mystery.   But we can imagine that the last Christmas could happen something like this.

It’s evening in a quiet house, somewhere in the suburbs. There is a man in his 50s. He comes out to his living room carrying a blanket and some pillows. He has a bit of a cold. His wife has gone to bed, but he’s come out to his living room to spend the night on the couch. He thinks his coughing will disturb his wife’s rest. He also wants to sleep more upright than his bed would allow, so he doesn’t get too congested. It’s the night of December 25^th.

The lights are on on his Christmas tree. He suddenly feels a sense of happiness and peace. “The Christmas spirit,” he thinks to himself. It had been a pleasant day with family, but “Christmas” was something they did mostly to humor him, so that unworldly feeling had eluded him before then.   Peace and goodwill were the meaning of the Christmas holiday, his grandmother had told him when he was young, and since he was young he’d believed her and, he supposed, still did.

He settled down onto the couch and thought a little about the tree. Getting the lights right had been tough. That had been four years ago, when the last strand he’d inherited from his grandmother had died.  No one else had wanted them.  They had held up surprisingly well, considering.  Four years ago he had found some programmable festival lights, then wrestled with various apps and software to get the right look that he remembered from his childhood. His son in college had helped. Then this year he discovered that one of the apps was discontinued and he’d had to do it all over again. But he was happy with the result, as frustrating as it had been. The lights looked right. So did the tree. Getting a permit for killing a tree would have been nearly impossible. He would have had to claim that carrying on this old family custom he remembered from his grandma was an essential part of his religious beliefs. It wasn’t; he wouldn’t have felt right saying that it was. Fortunately a good friend of his worked in landscaping and had plenty of dead trees that he just would throw out. Every year there had been an evergreen of about the right size and shape, with a little trimming and cutting. His friend was retiring this year. It would take some doing to find another source of trees. Maybe, he thought, this family holiday has reached its end.

The man thought back over the events of the evening. His children were adults. Young but adults. One had other things to do and couldn’t make it, one had to work. But his son had got off work early so he could come, and another daughter had come, and his wife was there of course. It wasn’t her thing, but she was willing to go along. They’d had a nice roast of vat grown meat, and potatoes, and other good things. His daughter had brought a dish from the new Indonesian fusion cuisine that she was proud of. It was good. He hadn’t insisted that they wear the costumes at any point, the towels on the head and the bathrobes, like he had done when he was a kid, or even as he had his own children do when they were young. It was part of the tradition that he felt wouldn’t have been well received. Everyone grows up, he thought. He remembered one Christmas day, or maybe it was a birthday, when his little daughter had followed him around all day, trying to hold his hand whenever possible. She had smiled shyly when he did. Now she was grown. When he’d reminded her at dinner, her teeth had flashed white as she laughed at the memory. It had been pleasant. Dinner, good memories, family laughter. They should get together more often, he thought. The traditional gag gifts had been funny too. No one’s feelings had been hurt, that was the important thing.

Somehow he felt very close to his grandmother. For a long time he could barely remember her. She’d been dead for thirty years, and failing before then. The holiday called Christmas had been a tradition from her side of the family. Lots of people used to do it when she was very little, she’d said. Everything he knew about it was from what she’d told him. If he’d had the time or patience to research more in scholarly articles from antiquarians he probably could have learned more. But he wasn’t interested in the historical scope of the event; he was just interested in what he’d learned from his Grandma long, long ago, when he was still a boy. He remembered her laughing face the Christmas she’d given him a shaving kit and he’d been 7 years old. Her laugh was a lot like his daughter’s, he suddenly realized.

Next time he visited his own aging parents, maybe he’d ask them for more details about what they’d remembered. It would be something to talk about.   Thank God their minds were still good.

Yes, it was probably time to stop doing Christmas, he thought. It had been a good run. He remembered his Grandma again. She had a song she used to sing. He was surprised to remember any of it after all this time. “Through the years we’ll always be together, if the fates allow.” Yes, he thought, yes.   Through the years.  Somehow good things were always coming to an end, good friends, good people, good family relationships, and new good things were always coming along to replace them. But, he felt tonight, good things never ceased just because they ended. They were still out there, always.

He decided to keep the lights on all night. It would be a night-long, quiet goodbye.